married life live

we went to married life live tonight, which was AWESOME!, with some of our small group and it got me thinking...

picture your spouse--your beloved.
picture exactly in specific detail what s/he deserves, wants, desires, needs----how s/he should be treated, be served, be spoken to, be helped, be forgiven, be loved.
picture what you would do to someone who wronged him/her. imagine what you'd do and to what lengths you would go to defend your love and be sure that his/her wants, desires, and needs were met.
picture what that incredible person you've married deserves each and every day.
...
are you that person they deserve most?
not "are you the spouse you can be?" because that allows you to limit yourself to your own hang-ups, your own baggage, your own expectations, your own definition of "can" and "cannot;" it also allows it to be all to easy to justify your short comings and failures in loving and serving your beloved.

are you the person your spouse deserves most?
and if not, why on earth not? what changes should be made that you can learn to become that person? I say "learn" because it often requires a conscious decision made repetitively until it becomes a discipline that then becomes a habit that then becomes a lifestyle.

correcting the incorrigible
There's a half-way decent book and an even less decent movie from the '60s called "Love Story." The tag line for the movie is: "Love means never having to say you're sorry." Not only is it cheesy, but it's just plain wrong. Love means having to say you're sorry every single day--multiple times, usually--and forgiving quickly and sincerely, as well. Anything less is a manipulation of reality.

Just thinking about life and love and marriage and family--my favorite things--and how it should be vs. what the world tells us it might be or is; choosing biblical definitions over pop-culture; and fighting for the switch in my own life from thought to action, from ideology to reality, from words to lifestyle. xoxo